A Systematic Review on Marital DistressThe dominance of positivism and the lack of gender problem

Recently, marital distress has considered as a common factor that leading to divorce. Results of studies indicated 20% of the population are at risk of marital distress at any moment. Therefore, it seems necessary to identify the predictors of marital distress and consider the gender problems for any preventive measures.So this systematic review was conducted to determine the predictors of marital distress in view of included studies and also how these studies considered the gender problems. The scope of this review included studies that carried out during the 1981-2018 and search strategy were developed in data bases using basic keywords of Marital Distress, Men, Women, Couples and their english equivalent. The results of present study showed, reviewed studies have considered the individual factors 52.2% (Especially in the United States), interpersonal 21.7% (especially European and Asian countries), socio-cultural 13%, individual and interpersonal 8%, and individual and Socio-cultural factors 4.3% as predictors of marital distress. Other results of present review showed 86% of reviewed studies have carried out based on quantitative approach and 60% of the studies did not considered a theoretical basis. In addition, it seems in most reviewed studies the researcher's viewpoint were based on positivism perspective of psychology and social psychology and absence of non-positivist concepts for resolution of this issue is clear; resolution which bring the concepts of " interaction sequence in marital relation"," couplesperceptual world," "emotional empathy" and "gender issues". This approaches along with positivism approaches can help to analytical richness of "marital distress studies".